Intro Productivity Definition

When picking a time monitoring tool, it is important to understand the many different types of tools available. Tools such as Mavenlink, Wrike, and Zoho Projects all feature robust time tracking features for professional services businesses. However, the time tracking features in such tools are available only as part of bigger project management (PM) suites. Because of this, you are paying much more cash for things such as file storage, in-app chat, progress reports, and shift management. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you will discover pure play time tracking tools like Hubstaff (which begins at $5 per month per user) and TSheets, our Editors’ Choice tool for time tracking. Productivity Definition

Characteristics and Utilization

Hubstaff’s user interface (UI) was created with a appealing left-rail blue navigation bar that leaves plenty of room around the side of your screen for data entry and analysis. When you first log into the system, you will be taken to the main dashboard, which gives you an summary of the number of hours your employees have worked this day and the number of hours they have worked over the past seven days. You will also find a list of every member, their latest jobs, and how active they’ve been over the past week. This is a strong PM data visualization that allows you instantly differentiate between workhorses and do-nothings, and it instantly calls to attention projects which are getting more than enough focus and projects that are being neglected.

There are two ways to put in time in Hubstaff: You can build manual timesheets with past hours worked, or you may use the stopwatch feature on Hubstaff’s native desktop program. Together with the timesheet attribute, you log your hours as you probably did with pen and paper during the analog age of time monitoring. Basically, if you work your change, you add the time to your own timesheet, and you also sign off on it. This is a pretty standard procedure of tracking time. Regrettably, because Hubstaff doesn’t let you add future time, you can’t use the platform as a shift organizer. Administrators can let users manually edit formerly submitted timesheets, and they can induce users to require a motive to ensure they’re actually adding hours they worked. Admins may also set the system up to let users to begin monitoring time if they haven’t clocked to the machine in a while.

The second, and most bothersome, way of monitoring time in Hubstaff is using the stopwatch feature. In each solution we tested, this component can be found within the boundaries of your web browserevery solution that is, except for Hubstaff. With Hubstaff, you are required to download an native desktop application that lives within another window. In it, you can choose your project, press Start, and your own timer will start counting. When you are done, your activity and your screenshots will be transmitted to the main hub. The native program will take a picture at random periods of up to three shots per hour based on how often the admin wants to spy on workers. Screenshots can be partly fuzzy not to capture sensitive information on every catch, but enough of this screen is left unsullied you’ll still get a sense of if the screen is on work-related or play-related content. This can be an annoyingly complicated and complicated way to manually track time, particularly if you’re jumping from task to task throughout the day. Hubstaff must find a way to bring the stopwatch and also screengrab elements to the cloud-based architecture to simplify ease of use.

Tracking time in real-time on Hubstaff’s Android and iOS apps is exactly the same as it’s on the desktop program. The mobile programs let admins monitor motions via GPS tracking. This provides you an overview of just how much movement was done by your employee by capturing location data at distinct stages.

The Schedules tab enables you to assign dates and times for workers to work. It is possible to set a minimum number of hours to operate, a lunch break duration, and you’ll be able to make it a recurring shift. The program’s reporting software is terribly basic: You’ll get access to weekly, daily, project, and member view reports in addition to a”habit” report that allows you filter data from the above reports. When compared to the PM options within this course, Hubstaff’s coverage is utterly embarrassing consequently, if your goal is to understand and evolve according to if and how your employees handle time, you would be better off working using Zoho Projects, our Editors’ Choice for PM.

Admins receive notifications when they’ve attained weekly staffing and funding limits. Invoices are automatically calculated and created depending on the time each employee worked, as well as their associated pay rate. You can set up automatic citizenship through PayPal, which lets you automate payments based on time tracked within the application. Remember: Users don’t have to send time for acceptance, so automatic payments will be made whether employees were wrong or right about the number of hours they worked. There’s no reminder for supervisors to double-check every timesheet ahead of automatic payments go out so, if you’re concerned about making false payments, then you can place PayPal payments to manual. Productivity Definition

Price And Alternatives

Hubstaff has been built to provide you with Big Brother-level oversight into when employees are working, what they are doing while they operate, and what you really need to pay them when the job is finished. The Fundamental $5-per-month plan gives you access to easy time monitoring tools, an employee payment schedule supervisor, 24/7 support, and user preferences which can be managed in an employee-by-employee basis. Moreover, this plan enables you to keep track of whether or not your employees are operating by letting you document screenshots while they function as well as monitor keyboard and mouse activity during changes. Of the five tools we’ve analyzed, Hubstaff is the only instrument which offered this amount of insight into how employees are progressing. Although keyboard and screen tracking are useful (albeit over-reaching) attributes for a shift screen, Hubstaff’s implementation leaves much to be desired (more on this later).

The $9-per-user-per-month Premium program includes all you’ll discover in the fundamental plan, but you will also get access to Hubstaff’s application programming interface (API) to integrate the application with other third party software. The Premium package also comes with a lightweight schedulingtool that gives administrators the power to assign shifts and assign tasks from within the console. Premium clients may also use the application to make invoices and create PayPal payments automatically. Customers that pay yearly will get two months free (for both price tiers).

Compared to TSheets, its nearest competition in our roundup, Hubstaff is fairly priced, particularly given the extra tracking features that are unavailable in competitive resources. TSheets supplies a fundamental free accounts, as well as a $4-per-user-per-month accounts that charges a $16 base fee per month for teams who have fewer than 100 users, along with an $80 foundation fee per month for groups with more than a hundred users. The base fee, which Hubstaff does not charge, makes TSheets marginally more costly than Hubstaff, even in Hubstaff’s Premium level.

If you’re more interested in those hulky PM alternatives, then you’ll want to pony up a little more cash. Mavenlink’s cheapest plan that includes time tracking prices $39 per user per month. Zoho’s cheapest time tracking plan is $25 per month for an unlimited number of consumers (that is a fairly good deal if you want all of the excess PM attributes ). Wrike’s cheapest time monitoring plan costs $24.80 per user per month.

What Should Be Added

Editor’s note: Since our original overview of Hubstaff, the company has released a significant update in late 2018 that specifically addressed specific feature weaknesses or omissions, such as adding a web timer, fleshing out coverage choices, and adding activity levels and screen tracking. We’ll be testing these features shortly and you will see the results in an upcoming update to this review.

Aside from its draconian screengrab and keystroke tracking, Hubstaff doesn’t do a very good job allowing for deeper shift supervision. For example, Hubstaff doesn’t allow advanced monitoring. If you run a trucking business and you are less concerned about how many hours a trucker drove than the distance driven, then there is no way to manage this in Hubstaff. Users may add notes to a empty text field, but that information won’t be mixed into reports. As a consequence, that you can’t use it to learn about who is working, how they’re functioning, and what they’re generating (aside from the amount of hours monitored ). TSheets not only provides you this option, it provides you the ability to make six additional customizable innovative tracking fields. You can even put in a query for every single clock-out (i.e.,”Was there an incident? Yes. No.”) And the system forces the user to reply to the queries at the close of each change or else they will not be able to clock out.

As hardcore as Hubstaff is about tracking work, the tool doesn’t allow for IP address restrictions, so your employees can say they’re working from the workplace but they can actually be operating from a cruise ship in the Bahamas (unless they’re using the mobile program to track time). This is a normal feature that’s available in virtually every other tool we tested. Hubstaff also does not enable admins to require users to snap a photograph if they report to work. I suppose it is overkill to make somebody take a selfie right before you get started recording their screen and monitoring their keystrokes, but TSheets lets you place this as a necessity (which makes sense, especially if you’re monitoring tasks done out of a computer, like retail, building, or amusement work). The program also does not allow users clock via a phone call, which is an element TSheets along with other service providers make available for workers who do not have a smartphone.

Monitoring Employee Work

We have touched on how some of Hubstaff’s more Enormous Brother-like attributes factor into time monitoring. However, the platform also offers many of the hallmarks of employee monitoring tools. Hubstaff’s employee monitoring features include keystroke logging, URL and program tracking, GPS and location monitoring, and action screenshots.

Once you place your users and they download the timer app onto their server, the desktop program not only tracks time but will require screenshots randomly or at custom intervals, for example three screenshots per minute. This applies not only to the user’s main screen but any attached monitors as well. Hubstaff doesn’t log keys however, it will monitor the action provided via the mouse and computer keyboard, giving employers a calculation of just how busy the employee is. This info all winds up around the Hubstaff dashboard in the Task tab. This is where you can then pick a user in the drop-down menu to see their screenshots correlated with activity data.

If it comes to application and URL tracking, Hubstaff goes beyond just tracking time to learn what websites and apps an employee opened or visited and how long they were there. The Reports module can subsequently run custom queries on vectors like app usage mapped against time and activity. Hubstaff integrates with job and job management tools such as Asana and Trello to filter reports from specific tasks or projects to track productivity.

1 unique employee tracking feature offered is GPS location monitoring through Hubstaff’s mobile program. While the cellular app can’t take screenshots or capture mobile app and website activity, it allows you to track and log place for employees working in the field. While the depth of monitoring surveillance and data features can not measure up to a powerhouse tool such as Teramind, our Editors’ Choice for employee tracking, Hubstaff has a helpful choice of features for companies that want a bit more oversight. Productivity Definition

Conclusion

Hubstaff is a easy-to-administer, feature-rich, time monitoring tool. If you’re diligent about monitoring employee behavior while on the clock, then there’s no better software accessible than Hubstaff. You’ll be able to log screenshots, monitor keystroke volume, and route movements via GPS monitoring.

Regrettably, if you’re trying to find a platform which goes the excess mile to enable customization, atypical data entry, or even a more advanced reporting structure, then Hubstaff won’t be perfect for you. Additionally, should you opt for another system, your employees will thank you for not requiring them to obtain a secondary app for monitoring time–particularly once you consider that every other tool we reviewed makes this possible within the boundaries of their online UI. Productivity Definition